I'm kind of surprised by this, but I want to quote someone from another
forum:
> Calling it "Linux" is a misnomer, and like a lot of
> misnomers, we seem to be stuck with it. The thing about
> languages is that they change and warp all the time.
> Whether you call it Linux or GNU/Linux doesn't actually
> matter as far as language is concerned.
>
> The reason "Linux" is a misnomer is that Linux started
> out as something completely different, but was used to
> make a complete UNIX-like OS by supplying a missing piece
> of the GNU OS project.
>
> If you start making a free car design called GRacecar but
> you have difficulty making wheels for it, so you use
> Wheelix wheels. Wheelix doesn't make sense as a name for
> the car. If you add many parts from other projects to the
> car until the GRacecar parts are a much smaller
> percentage, it doesn't really mean that the name should
> be any different. For both the GNU project and the
> GRacecar project it doesn't matter if you they don't
> design any of the parts, assuming the parts you use are
> free and work well than the goal of the project is
> fulfilled.
>
> At this point however, it's called Linux simply because
> that's what people call it, this may change in the future
> however. The fact that many people are ignorant of the
> original purpose that produced a free (though many
> versions have "nonfree" parts) OS is not actually related
> to the name at all. If the name GNU/Linux would solve
> this problem then why do you think people stopped calling
> it that and started using "Linux".
I don't quite agree with the person who said this; I think something should
be done about the misnomer, but it's pretty much my opinion about the current
situation and why I don't think Wikipedia is in the wrong.
